Public housing - the desire of teachers in border areas

Mr. Pham Van Mui, a teacher at Ca Giang village school, Trung Ly 2 Primary School, Trung Ly commune (Muong Lat) and his wife took advantage of the opportunity to improve the land to grow vegetables.

Muong Lat is one of the border districts with fragmented terrain and difficult transportation. Many remote schools are dozens of kilometers away from the commune center. That unintentionally causes difficulties for teachers in traveling to their teaching places, because they have to overcome dangerous and slippery roads during the rainy season.

Not only teachers, but also students face many difficulties when going to school. The long distance makes them have to go to school early in the morning. On days with bad weather, many students are forced to stay home from school, affecting the maintenance of class size and the quality of education. In this context, many teachers assigned to teach at remote schools have to stay in the village to ensure the teaching program.

According to statistics, Muong Lat district has 163 public rooms for teachers. Of which, preschool level has 14 rooms; primary level has 101 rooms; secondary level has 48 rooms. However, the total number of teachers in need of public housing is up to 343 people, including 97 preschool teachers, 147 primary school teachers and 99 secondary school teachers. Thus, the teachers' public housing currently only meets about 60% of the demand. To ensure teaching and learning, many teachers have to rent rooms or use classrooms as temporary accommodation. The reason is that investment resources are still limited, the budget is focusing on building schools and purchasing equipment to innovate the 2018 General Education Program. At schools that do not have public housing, the schools have made efforts to encourage teachers to temporarily overcome difficulties to work with peace of mind.

Mr. Pham Van Mui, a teacher at the Ca Giang village school of Trung Ly 2 Primary School, shared: "The school is nearly 50km from the center of Trung Ly commune. To ensure teaching, teachers are forced to stay in the village. However, living conditions are still lacking, especially the lack of public housing, making the lives of teachers difficult. A solid roof not only helps us stabilize our accommodation, but also gives us more motivation to stick with the career of "sowing letters" in the difficult border area."

To reduce the burden on teachers and create an equal working environment, the Board of Directors of Trung Ly 2 Primary School regularly transfers teachers between the center and the satellite schools appropriately. At the same time, teachers are encouraged to overcome difficulties to work with peace of mind and improve the quality of teaching and learning. However, in the long term, the school hopes that all levels and sectors will pay attention to investing in building public housing so that teachers can devote themselves to the education of Trung Ly commune for a long time.

Talking to Mr. Le Trung Kien, Deputy Head of the Department of Education and Training of Muong Lat district, he said: "The district has mobilized capital sources to invest in building teachers' public housing in recent years. However, this number is still not enough to meet the actual needs of hundreds of teachers. In the coming time, the district needs to build 90 additional public rooms for teachers of all levels. Accordingly, the district sets a goal of completing at least 50% of the rooms by the end of 2025 and continuing to complete the remaining number by 2026. This not only helps improve the living conditions of teachers, but is also a solution to "retain" teachers and teachers to stay in school, stay in class and continue to contribute to the education cause of the border district of Muong Lat.

Article and photos: Dinh Giang

Source: https://baothanhhoa.vn/nha-o-cong-vu-niem-mong-moi-cua-giao-vien-vung-bien-243699.htm